Research project PE/FI/04 (Research action PE)
The mission of the Ministry of Finance is multiple.
In this research emphasis will be laid on the input, the fiscal part, which involves several departments within the ministry that collaborate towards fixing and collecting taxes on the basis of the fiscal system.
The tax collection system will be compared with several analogous foreign systems and attention will be paid to modernisation with a view to improving efficiency and effectiveness.
The objective of this comparison is the development of a control system and of instruments adapted to the Belgian situation. One can generally attempt to analyse a fiscal system as a chart of input/output effects, the inputs being defined over a certain period as materials, equipment, human resources, and regulations, and the outputs as the volume of each type of tax form, the number of audits with positive or negative effects, the number of requests receiving a positive or negative response.
Finally, the effects can be measured in terms of the amounts legitimately or illegitimately collected.
The relationship between inputs and outputs is called efficiency or productivity. The relationship between output and effects is called cost-effectiveness. By examining both the efficiency and the effectiveness of the fiscal administration, it is possible to establish a link between the means deployed (input) and the effects they produce.
